A review by dtaylorbooks
The Twelve Even Stranger Days of Christmas by Syd Moore

Did not finish book. Stopped at 46%.

Where did I stop? 46% in

Why? I’m not sure what’s going on with this book, but it doesn’t have much, if anything, to do with Christmas. I read half the book and only two stories were even set at Christmas, and that’s where that ended. The holiday was a mention, and then the story had nothing else to do with it. With the way it’s packaged, from the cover to the blurb, you’d expect something nominally holiday-like. That’s really not happening here. The stories are odd, and I think in another anthology I could have appreciated some of them, but they don’t really seem to be linked in any meaningful way. This just felt like a book of random short stories packaged as something to do with Christmas. It’s very misleading. I honestly think this book would do better not packaged as having anything to do with Christmas. That’s really what made me stop reading. I’d picked it up because I was expecting something creepy, maybe spooky, and left of center around Christmas. That’s not what I got. Creepy, spooky, odd, yes. But not Christmas. That’s literally the whole reason I bought this book, and I did not get what I thought I was paying for. To be clear: I was NOT expecting a cozy out of this book. It doesn’t come off as cozy at all. I was just expecting something vaguely Christmasy, and it’s not there.